[dba-Tech] upgrading RAM

> I recommend 1 gig at a MINIMUM for Windows XP.  XP itself uses at around 
> 256
> megs all by itself.  If you throw in Antiviruses, software firewalls,
> malware detectors and the like... well you get the picture.  If you
> multitask heavily (access, word and Office plus Outlook all open at the 
> same
> time) then you should have much more.

=======I'm running Windows XP and honestly, with just the 256MB, things 
aren't that bad. I've been working with this system since 02 or 03 (can't 
remember). It just recently started to slow down. Multi-tasking is 
limited -- I usually have Word and "something else" open -- but it seldom 
gets busier than that.

Thanks for the information.

Susan H.


>
> If you want to run VMs then you will need more.  Depending on what you 
> want
> to run inside of the VM, I would recommend at LEAST an additional 500 megs 
> /
> VM, probably 750 Megs / VM to be on the safe side - those will be the
> amounts that you give the VM.  Most people will not multi-task heavily
> inside of a VM, they tend to be used mostly for testing a program against 
> a
> specific OS, so the memory requirements usually won't be as extreme as a
> developer's main machine.  If you use a lot of memory in the VM then
> obviously you will need more memory for that VM, however you will quickly
> run into a limit of how many VMs you can have going at the same time, not
> that most of us run a lot of them simultaneously.  BTW, more cores helps 
> the
> speed of VMs.  I would HIGHLY recommend at least a dual core and a quad 
> core
> if you really get into the VM thing heavily.